The Unitarian Universalist Church of Arlington, VA
The Rev. Paul L’Herrou
January
11, 1998
In his Biographical Sketch of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Elliot Berlin warned us not to canonize and make a saint of Emerson. It may, however, be too late. Every religion has its saints, those revered individuals who seem larger than life, those individuals for whom churches are named - St. Joseph Roman Catholic Church, St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, Emerson Unitarian Church of Canoga Park, California, the first church which I served as minister. Even we Unitarian Universalists have our saints, those individuals for whom our churches are named. The last time I checked the UUA Directory, I concluded that Emerson is our most popular saint. We have five churches named for him.
As Elliot mentioned, Emerson was a Unitarian minister, although he only lasted about three years before he went on to become a renowned public lecturer and essayist. There are many opinions as to why Emerson left the active ministry. At least one contributing factor was that, in spite of his commanding presence in the lecture hall, he was quite introverted and uncomfortable in personal interactions.
It is reported that in 1829, when Emerson was Minister at Second Church in Boston, he called on a Revolutionary War veteran on his death bed. Emerson was hesitant and awkward and was told by the dying veteran, "Young man, if you don’t know your business, you had better go home." Even our saints have their weak points.
Probably Emerson’s best-known essay is "Self-Reliance." It is the supreme argument for forming our own opinions and standing up for our own beliefs. "Self-Reliance contains some lines which have become as much a part of our collective unconscious as many familiar Bible Passages. For instance, "Whoso would be a man (and I would add - or a real woman), must be a nonconformist… It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man (or woman) is one who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude."
This is a stirring call for us to hold firmly to our own particular understanding of what is right and true. These words buttressed those of us who opposed the Vietnam War long before it became popular to do so. These words have been the solace of families which have fought against prayer in public schools. These words have inspired those who have taken and upheld unpopular positions in many times and places. These words have inspired a reliance on individual conscience in standing up to and influencing the larger community.
But, these words also inspire us when we verbal, outspoken Unitarian Universalists step into the arena of a congregational meeting or a district conference or our annual General Assembly to duke it out with no holds barred from our opposing viewpoints. It may be those who ardently believe that a church should take strong public stands on social issues against those who say that a Unitarian Universalist church cannot possibly take a stand, because taking a unified stand would exclude those members who are in disagreement and because of our principle of freedom of individual belief. It may be those who do not want anything that reminds them of "traditional" church against those who value a sense of reverence and liturgy. It may be those who value process and dialogue even when it does not achieve resolution against those who are ready to set process aside in order to achieve results.
At various times, in every congregation, people who are absolutely committed to opposing opinions line up on their respective sides to fight it out, each defending the absolute rightness of their position, unwilling to search for common ground on which both can stand. Each seemingly convinced that to be a real man or a real woman, they must, in the midst of the crowd, keep with perfect sweetness and toughness the independence of solitude - even if it destroys the community. These words and a surface reading of Emerson have led to the adoption of Self-Reliance as the justification, the manifesto, the scripture of rugged individualism.
Rugged individualism is the go-it-alone, I am right and I will not be influenced by you, I don’t need anyone else approach to life. Too often, our veneration of rugged individualism results in ragged and rent community. People feel compelled to defend one side or the other. The pursuit of rugged individualism suppresses true self-reliance, which is rooted, according to Emerson, in an individual perception of the Ultimate. Churches become fragmented. Individuals are denigrated, damaged and dismissed. People become reluctant to share feelings and thoughts for fear of ridicule and censure. So, the inner, intuitive search for ultimate truth is curtailed. It feels unsafe to be uncertain and to try out different approaches or ideas. Yet, community, and church community in particular, should be a supportive place for the spiritual search, the search for meanings and for purpose in our lives, a place where we can explore and try out different perspectives and understandings, as we grow and change throughout our lives.
And, in fact, in “Self-Reliance,” Emerson writes, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines… Speak what you think now in hard words and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day… The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks. (Those were the days of sailing ships.) See the line from a sufficient distance, and it straightens itself to the average tendency. Your genuine action will explain itself and will explain your other genuine actions. Your conformity explains nothing.”
Even though Emerson is cited as the justification of so-called rugged individualism, of unbridled freedom, of doing your own thing, he is really saying something very different. He is saying neither - be so convinced of your rightness that you march off in one direction no matter who or what gets in your way, nor allow the crowd, popular opinion, pop culture to determine your direction.
Emerson is saying - each one of us participates in the Ultimate, in what he calls, in another essay, - The Over-Soul. Each one of us, through our intuition and a heightened sense of openness and wonder, can perceive our own understanding of ultimate value. That understanding of ultimate value, of ultimate truth, even though we may understand it differently next week, has got to be our compass - not popular opinion and not our own imposed will. And, because I respect that glimpse of the Over-Soul which I find at the depth of my individual soul, I will also respect your attempt to touch the depth dimension within you. In contemporary language, in our current Unitarian Universalist Statement of Principles, we are called “to affirm and promote acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth.
We can support each other in the quest for truth and meaning, and through our differing understandings and the respectful dialogue of strongly-held ideas and commitments, we can draw closer to what has ultimate meaning and satisfaction for us all.
This is the meaning of community. It is not conformity, nor is it separateness. Community is the ability to be with one another in all of our uniqueness, with all of our differences, without losing our selfhood and to so respect our own understandings and perceptions that we also respect the sincere perceptions of others, while being vulnerable enough to allow our self to be influenced and changed by the very different viewpoint of another.
Self-reliance is the pre-condition for true community. True community is the nurturing environment for strong and healthy individualism. Maturity, individuation, is the ability to be self-reliant and intimate at the same time.
Self-reliance is the quality of respecting your own inner search for what seems most true and meaningful for you and contributing your resulting unique viewpoint to enrich the community through diversity. As Emerson puts it - “The power which resided in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried… Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life’s cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another you have only an extemporaneous half possession.”
However, as Unitarian Universalists, as members of a religious denomination which rejects dogma and scriptural revelation, we sometimes seem to have taken rugged individualism as our dogma and Emerson’s Self-Reliance as our gospel. We have sometimes made an absolute value of independence, as if to be dependent would be depersonalizing and degrading. But, Emerson was not independent. If nothing else, he was extremely dependent on the women in his life. He was dependent on his aunt, whose writing inspired some of his best thinking. He was dependent on his consumptive first wife, who conveniently died and left him enough money so that he could pay off his debts, drop out of the ministry and take up a leisurely life of writing and lecturing. He was dependent on his second wife, who cooked and cleaned and mended, cared for the children and took care of his needs so that he could spend half his life quietly thinking and writing and the other half lecturing, traveling and enjoying the adulation of his fans.
Emerson was dependent, just as we all are more or less dependent. We are dependent on human relationships which nurture and support us. We are dependent on the physical world which sustains us. We are dependent on our employers and the economy, which are, in turn, dependent on us. We are dependent on our automobiles to give us some measure of independence.
The gist of the problem seems to be that we understand Emerson to be saying that it is noble not only to be an individual, but to be independent. But, every human being needs other human beings in order to survive. Total independence, the independence which much in our culture glorifies, is an illusion, an illusion which blinds us to the realities and the deficiencies of our dependencies and the dependencies of others upon us.
Emerson is often quoted out of context, by those who would justify rugged individualism, as writing “…do not tell me, as a good man did to-day, of my obligation to put all poor men in good situations. Are they my poor?” Actually, Emerson was making a point that our actions and assistance should emanate from the essence of who we are, rather than from a disconnected sense of charity.
It has been my experience that when someone says, such as Emerson might seem to be saying, when someone protests that they don’t want others to need them, and that they don’t need others, it is really because they are afraid to ask for help. They may be afraid that they will be refused or that the price will be too high. They may be afraid that they will have to acknowledge just how dependent they really are. The rejection of dependence does not lead to freedom. Freedom comes from facing our dependencies and bringing their costs and their benefits into balance.
Dependence is healthy, when what we depend on and its cost to us is in relative balance - when we are interdependent. Dependence is destructive when the cost and benefit are out of balance. Romantic relationships are destructive when we are so dependent on what we hope to get from the other that we feel helpless or self-destructive and undermine our own sense of wholeness. An out-of-balance dependence on the resources of nature is destructive. An in-balance, interdependent relationship is the goal of the ecology movement.
We are all dependent. You folks who sing in the Choir are dependent on a skillful director, on Vera to draw out your untouched talents and meld your efforts into a cohesive whole. But, Vera depends on you to create the sound. Our children, both our own children and the children of our congregation, are dependent on us for their support and nurture and guidance. But, we also are dependent on them to pick up the task and carry out our hopes and dreams for a more livable, more just and peaceful future. Our friendships, our work relationships, our parent and child relationships, our sexual-affinity relationships, our most intimate relationships are expressions of mutual dependence.
Emerson, put it in this way: “Within all is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related; the eternal One.” In contemporary usage, this is expressed by our Seventh Principle: “Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.” Like the writings of Emerson, this is based on a theology of relatedness.
There is continuity and coherence between the theology and values of Emerson and those we express today - though the words may be different. The seventh principle is an expression of a theology that suggests that the divine, the holy, the sacred is in the relationships between all things. Ultimate Reality is not a noun. The Ground of Being is not something out there. The Spirit of Life is a verb. It is the interaction of things in relationship. There is a spark of divinity within each of us which binds us one to another and which calls us to be co-creators of this world.
In Emerson’s words, “We lie in the lap of immense intelligence, which makes us receivers of its truth and organs of its activity. When we discern justice, when we discern truth, we do nothing of ourselves, but allow a passage to its beams.”
Such a theology carries a heavy weight of responsibil-ity. If we are co-creators with the Ultimate, if we are part of the interdependent web of all existence, and yet live our lives as if existence were composed of separate beings doing their own thing, we in fact destroy the very fabric which connects us.
We are partners with the Goddess, God, Creative Interchange, whatever we name it, in the always becoming universe. This is a theology which understands the Interdependent Web as the flow, the wholeness, the infinite variety and richness of Life itself. We are linked to all of creation, yet must recognize our individual unique qualities, gifts and understandings. We are co-creators with this Reality in the eternal process of creation.
Rebecca Parker, the president of Starr King School for the Ministry, the seminary from which I graduated, puts it in this poetic expression:
Your gifts - whatever you discover them to be - can be used to bless or curse the world.
The mind’s power,
the strength of the hands,
the reaches of the heart,
the gift of speaking, listening, imagining, seeing,
waiting
any of these can serve to feed the hungry,
bind up wounds,
welcome the stranger,
praise what is sacred,
do the work of justice
or offer love.”
“None of us alone can save the world.
Together - that is another possibility.”
Amen
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